Question

Development of Lean Model for House Construction Using Value Stream Mapping” discuss how successful an LSS Project can be using the construction industry as a model. The construction industry compared to a manufacturing industry is like comparing “apples to oranges” …or is it? For example, there are tremendous differences in the construction industry verses the manufacturing industry in how work is performed (spontaneous verses repetitive tasks), unique design verses mass-production, and standard task and cycle times verses random times.

Answer 1

Value stream mapping is one of lean philosophy where the entire value creation process is mapped (similar to business process map) with focus and segregation of value adding and non-value adding activities. Let's see how construction industry is different and similar to vanilla manufacturing industry. Manufacturing industry the end products are mostly standardised, whereas every construction project is unique due to its design, purpose and other socio-economic factors. Hence, the effort towards building a value stream mapping for waste reduction is apparently most beneficial for manufacturing than construction industry. However, lean six sigma projects using value stream mapping for construction Industry is equally beneficial for both delivering quality, reducing cost and thus providing profitability. This is even more applicable due to the fact that typically because of its unique nature, construction industry have tendency to incur increasing wastes that manufacturing industry.

Let us understand this with a simple example of concrete slab construction. It could be a pre-fab or a one of concrete slab preparation. Typically construction work stars with preparation of wooden or metal sheets and shuttering. While base of these shutters are formed, steel rods are ordered. There are several wastes that take place during this process. Wastes may arise due to long delivery of steel rods, cement and other concrete materials. Wastes might incur due to the fact that rods are in the manufacturing site without being used due to the fact that shuttering is not completed. In later case, you would need security and space to take care of the inventories. There are waste due to cutting of rods or wrong shuttering. Because of the improper value stream, there may be labour wastage as not adequate work is available for all types of labour. Hence, is such instances it is extremely important is to understand the importance of these lead times and associated costs and then accordingly plan the entire activity of construction process in such a way that multiples wastes can be reduced will not only help high quality but also help firm profitability.

Most importantly, even though, the end products are mostly unique, many of the sub-processes are product agnostic. Hence, firms adopting value stream mapping in one construction site can leverage the lessons learnt in building the initial mapping for other construction site.